Family of man killed outside Fort Worth Walmart remember him as generous, devoted father
DeAudwin Hollie was just starting to get his life turned around, leaving behind a past of run-ins with the law and time in jail with a determination to be there for his children and run successful businesses, his father said.
Now, though, Hollie’s family is grieving. The 29-year-old father of two was shot and killed May 10 outside a Walmart in north Fort Worth, according to police. His family says a cousin Hollie was trying to help pulled the trigger.
“The whole situation with him passing, it was a situation where he was trying to help someone that he cared about,” Hollie’s wife, Samantha Singleton, told the Star-Telegram on Sunday. “He lived to help others.”
Police haven’t made any arrests or publicly identified any suspects in the homicide, but the family says they know who the killer is and hope someone will turn him in.
From never hesitating to help family to insisting every night after dinner that he and Singleton make plates of leftovers he could hand out to people in his community experiencing homelessness, family members said at a candlelight vigil Sunday evening that Hollie looked for every opportunity he could find to show love to those around him.
Hollie had been in and out of jail earlier in life, but Singleton said that before she started dating him in 2020 he vowed to her that he was never going to do anything to get arrested again. She said that while part of it was for himself, the main reason he was so determined to stay out of jail was so he could be with his daughter.
“He would have done anything under the sun for our children,” Singleton said. “Everything that he did came down to family. Everything that he worked for. Everything that he did. He was a family man, and that’s all he wanted to do.”
Other family members, like his cousin Kerri Gipson, said Hollie went out of his way to support and encourage the people he loved. Gipson, a comedian, said Hollie would come to his shows even though they kept him out past the time by which he typically required himself to be home and spending time with Singleton and his children.
“One of the only times he was out of the house past 9 at night would be to come to see me at a show,” Gipson said. “That’s the kind of man he was. There were only a few things that could get him away from home when it was family time, and it was usually because he was with someone else in the family.”
Hollie’s relatives gathered at William McDonald Park on Sunday evening, the day after his funeral, to remember his life. They grilled hot dogs while the children in the family ran laughing and screaming around the playground or played basketball at the court in the park.
The adults sat around tables under the pavilion, keeping an eye on the kids and drinking soda. Just before sunset, the family gathered in the baseball field at the park, carrying candles and balloons on which many had written messages of love. They prayed for peace, strength and understanding, then let the balloons go. Gipson encouraged the family to do what Hollie would have wanted: “Keep supporting each other and stick together.”
Much of the time together Sunday evening was spent sharing stories, like one DeAudwin Hollie’s sister, Precious Hollie, remembers about his fear of crabs and anything else with pinchers.
She remembered Hollie making a seafood salad for his mother’s birthday and deciding to include crawfish in it.
“One of them pinched at him and it scared him so much he jumped like four feet into the air,” Precious Hollie recalled, getting a big laugh from everyone around.
Leslie Reed, his stepmother, said she will never forget when she worked at the State Fair of Texas in Dallas and he would visit her while she was working. She would use a break to take him around to play the games, trying to win prizes.
“He always had a big old smile on his face, always, especially when he was playing those games,” Reed said. “I’ll always be able to hear the way he used to say my name, too. He would say it like ‘Leh-leh.’ “
DeAudwin Hollie’s father, Willie Warren, said he was incredibly proud of his son for the way he’d started living his life in recent years. Like most in the family, he wanted to talk about how Hollie had gone from a lifestyle that saw him go to jail multiple times to a family man and business owner.
“He just wanted a good life, so he changed his life,” Warren said. “He’d been on the right track. He was just starting to see what the good life is like.”
Just four months after vowing that he would never do anything to go back to jail, his family said, he started a business and earned the money to buy a house and car. Singleton said he did it at first for his daughter, so they could live there together, then found additional motivation in Singleton and the child they had together in 2022.
Hollie started with buying vehicles at auctions, fixing them up and selling them, something Warren said he has experience in and was excited to help his son do. Then he bought an ice cream truck and started using that to make more money.
For family events, Hollie would bring the truck, Mr. Freeze Jr., and give out free treats to his little cousins, nieces and nephews. Anything he could do for his family, they said, he did it without a second thought.
The fact that Hollie was running two successful businesses and enjoying life with Singleton and the children makes it harder for Warren to process his death.
“I didn’t even cry when my mama died,” he said. “She taught me to be strong because she wouldn’t always be there. It hurt. It was painful. But kids know their parents will go before they do. This is different. I have to still be strong for family. But you can’t prepare for this. You can’t prepare for losing your only son.”
